Vs Fagiano Okayama (home) 25/10/26 J League match 12

 

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Fagiano Okayama 

Two games in a row both finishing with 2-1 home wins. Lovely! But to be honest that’s where the similarities end. My initial impulse is to just say that if you want to know about this game you should read the Vissel post and just reverse everything about that game. Against Vissel we’re looked pretty good and they looked awful. We attacked and created chances. In this game we looked pretty toothless and had hardly any shots. And Okayama were almost certainly frustrated with the result. It’s difficult to pick out too many details from what was a big old sludge of a match, but I’ll do my best with a few things and then move on without wasting too much of your time.

Ok, so as far as I’m concerned, aside from us being very disappointing in this match, (which when coupled with getting the win actually makes a nice change from some of the other ways we’ve played matches this year), the main point of interest has to be the selections. Hasebe reverted to what I consider to be his first choice starters as much as he could. In spite of us battering Kobe on Wednesday we were back to the usual midfield and wingers. Of course when it comes to the defence and the striker we don’t have many options to play with so it’s no surprise nothing much changed there. I don’t really know why he’d change to the team he uses for cup games for Vissel and change back to the league team for Okayama. I guess it could mean I’ve got confused about what his first choice team is, but I doubt it. Obviously with so many games some rotation is needed. But It’s hard not to think that he rotated for the Vissel game because he’d written it off and was going to focus on getting three points against Okayama instead. Which is a bit weird in retrospect when you consider how the games turned out. If this is the case it would definitely say something about his confidence in our abilities. You’ve got to presume he’ll change things again for our next cup game away at Sagan Tosu on Wednesday. But now after this weekend’s results have moved us up in the table and now we’re only five points off the top, Hasebe might start having some more things to think about. It’s a weird season as we don’t seem to get the rewards when we play well but sometimes do get them when we dither around and are somehow still in touch with the top. Maybe the league is quite even this year. Right now it’s quite annoying that we threw away a lead against Machida. Well all the leads we’ve thrown away are annoying, but given that they’re top that one is particularly annoying right now. I can’t say I’m confident we’ll be able to keep up this slow and steady… charge… up the table. But it’s quite enjoyable whilst it continues. Saying that, there wasn’t much joy in this match. Of course the goals were fun, but we only had seven shots in the whole game, so clearly there was a whole lot of nothing going on for us for most of the match. A few other points which are slightly more pertinent to the match maybe. Uremovic did a great job dealing with Lucao. Their battle was much more entertaining than anything we did going forward. It says a lot that he could stand out even though he was playing alongside our recent best defender Pedro Romano. Maybe the one other thing to say was that Hasebe once again tried the Ozeki coming on on the left wing thing. It worked almost immediately against Cerezo but didn’t really in this game. Osa hasn’t been involved recently and probably would have made more sense. But then that would have meant no Ozeki as the players in his preferred positions don’t get changed very often. But it’s strange that after years of having loads of wide options at the moment we now seem to basically have Marcinho and Ito and then we have to start chucking central midfielders out there. But both Yamaichi and Ozeki do a better job on the wing than Wakizaka does, so maybe it makes sense. I shouldn’t think about these things too much I guess. I don’t really understand what Hasebe is thinking but you can’t deny that whatever he’s thinking seems to be working more often than not recently. And when you consider that we’re not exactly blessed with alternatives in lots of positions, you’ve got to give him the thumbs up for making what we have work most of the time. Even if we do get some truly uncomfortable and borderline unwatchable games like this one. I think that most of the stadium probably thought we were going to concede a late equaliser. And even though we spent the last five minutes trying to keep the ball in the corner to run down the clock, (which seemed like it might go wrong), we somehow managed to see out the game and take the three points. Blimey. I guess I should probably mention that the goals were good. And it’s a bit of luck we scored from those chances because we didn’t have a great deal of other chances. Oh, and Derik is faster than I thought.

I’ll deal with both The opposition and the officials in one paragraph. Okayama deserved more. They played better than us for most of the match. The ref was a bit dodgy but I don’t have any major complaints. It’s not often I say that, is it? So, well done Okayama and sorry we cheated you out of at least one point. And… well done to the ref. Hmmm. That doesn’t feel very comfortable to write. 

Next up Sagan Tosu away in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday. Then the following Sunday we have an away game at YFM. I would love to be able to go to the former but can’t. There’s not a great deal to recommend about the latter, but I’ll be there. Fingers crossed we can continue our nice little run. 

 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO 
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya 

MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 59') 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAHARA 72')  
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 82')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAMOTO 82')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for DERIK LACERDA 64')  
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MARCINHO 72')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
FW 34. OSA Ryuki 


Man of the match

Has to be…

FILIP UREMOVIC - definitely not as classy with the ball as some of our other defenders but very much got the job done in this match. And it was mentioned to me that if any of our other centre backs were given the same contain-and-disrupt-Lucao job that he was, they almost certainly couldn’t have done it as effectively. Nice one Filip!

Goals

DERIK LACERDA (Frontale) 12' 1-0
MARCINHO (Frontale) 51' 2-0
OBERDAN (Okayama) 75' 2-1 

Highlights 

 

Vs Vissel Kobe (home) 21/10/26 J League match 11

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Vissel Kobe

What a delightful result this was! And what a strange season we are having. It’s felt pretty underwhelming but surprisingly we’ve only lost two games and that’s only one less than the teams at the top. I guess it’s the multiple missed opportunities that make things feel frustrating. Particularly strong in the memory still is us battering Kashima but having to rely on a very late equaliser to grasp a point. We’ve thrown away leads so many times, totally dominated but failed to trouble the opposition keeper so many times. And it really felt like that was going to happen again in this game. Kobe looked terrible, had only had two shots and very little possession in the first half but were still absolutely in the game at half time due to us being unable to shoot. But we finally managed to put the ball in the net. And then did it again. And then immediately conceded ensuring that once again we couldn’t have a relatively stress free end to a match. But we held on and it was lovely. Beating one of the teams above us and with interesting results for some of the leading teams made me excited to check the league table. But we finished exactly where we started, in 7th position and seven points off top. But don’t let that kill your buzz as this was a very welcome result.

Us -

Hasebe shuffled the midfield brining in Ozeki and Kawahara and played Yamaichi instead of Ito. Before the game I said that it appeared that he was in a way writing this game off by playing what I presumed he thought of as a semi reserve side. I also said that if we went on to beat Kobe with those players he should have some thinking to do as I felt that quite a lot of our struggles this year have been due to the midfield not really working. Presumably we’ll be back to the usual three on Sunday for the visit of Okayama. I think this would be quite harsh on the starters in this match as I thought they did well. At the back it seemed that our defensive injury crisis might not have been as bad as it looked last week as both Sasaki and Romano started. Romano was taken off after a clash of heads in the second half though, much to his disgust. I think once again it was precautionary. And let’s hope so as we are really down to bare bones. In the first half we contrived to miss good chances in a variety of ways, ranging from massively off target shots to delicate roll backs straight into the keepers gloves. Derik and Marcinho didn’t really have the best of games, but then in the second half Marcinho came up with the goods again. It’s so strange that he always seems to score in games where he hasn’t been playing particularly well. It’s not a bad situation to be in, but can you imagine what we’d be like if his passing in the box was even just a little bit better. Great work for the goal though! On the other wing I thought Yamaichi did really well. I’m starting to like him more and more and it seems like he can do the job in various positions. So, what else? Bit of a shame that Vissel had only one shot on target but still managed to score. That also seems to be something we just have to put up with this year. Matsunagane did really well in his brief appearance, really annoying Kobe by keeping the ball in their half and winning throw after throw to run down the clock. Absolutely loved Ito’s goal. And even more loved the fact that in his post match interview when asked if it was a shot or cross, said it was a cross. I wonder if it was helped in by the swirling wind that kept coming and going for most of the match. Some goal kicks and long balls seemed to just go up and hang in the air. Maybe we can blame the wind for the goal we conceded. Maybe not. I’m not going to say we’ve turned a corner as we’ll more than likely lose to Okayama in the next match, but it did feel good to for once not throw away a game after dominating. Fingers crossed!

Them - 

Scummy scummy Kobe. Maybe even their fans are starting to feel the same way as hardly any of them turned up. They couldn’t anywhere near fill the small allocation that we gave them. Their selection of songs contains every single shitty song that other clubs sing. It’s basically like a greatest shits of the lamest stuff including that one that the US men’s team use, the Enter-bloody-tainer and plenty more. If you’ve been irritated by another team singing something tacky, you can almost guarantee that there will be a Vissel version. To be honest though, I shouldn’t be focusing on the fans as they can’t help their team being scummy. On the pitch the scum was scumming, elbows all over the place from the Kobe forward line, Thuler just being the wanker that he is at the back. Shame he didn’t decide to boot the ball at an official and get sent off again. And of course Erik, a scumbag who understandably given his scumminess, seems to want to play for all the scummiest teams in the league. (Presumably he’ll complete the set by transferring to Urawa and Kashima in the next two seasons). To go from Machida to Kobe, back to Machida and then back to Kobe again is just bizarre. Surely the fans of both teams must think he’s a bit of a prick, right? I certainly do. It was very enjoyable when Romano took the ball off of him in the first half. And even more enjoyable when he wet the bed, stamping his feet because the ref wouldn’t let him back on the pitch where he clearly would be interfering with play. I guess this is all the same old stuff that I always write about Kobe. The only original content this time is perhaps remarking on how shit they were! Lovely! I’ll end this part by commenting on one of their banners and by asking a question about another of them. (I probably always do this too). The comment, ‘We Shall Overcome’ is a strange one. Perhaps the last part which said ‘… the awful difficulty of having absolutely massive financial backing’ was covered by other banners. And what is ‘11 Stones’ all about? It was on numerous flags of theirs. It’s so weird that I can’t even think of anything snarky to write about it.

Ref - 

Nakamura was back in town to further tarnish the one time glory he got from being voted ref of the year a few years ago. To be honest, he wasn’t too bad compared to some of the other absolute dross we’ve had recently. Pretty sure he missed or wasn’t interested in two Kobe handballs, stopped the game on numerous occasions for Kobe play acting and injury feigning and gave and denied some advantages in a bonkers fashion. Also, his counting down of seconds for their interminable long throws was absolutely random. If you’re not doing a long throw the count starts as soon as the thrower has the ball it seems. But if you’re doing a long throw Nakamura not only doesn’t start counting till you’ve started your 30 metre run up, but almost goes as far as to offer his own shirt for them to use to dry the ball and give the thrower a quick massage to make he doesn’t do himself a mischief through over exertion of the shoulders. To be fair, I think the numerous things they now have to count are a ridiculous over complication of their duties. And given that the countdown speed seems to be quite fluid, the initial seconds being a lot shorter than the final ones, and the four and five of the count always coming precisely as they take the throw, no matter how long they’ve dithered over it, it’s more like a kind of hype man thing, counting down to the launch and building excitement rather than actually measuring time. I wouldn’t mind if they got rid of the law even though it would maybe encourage more long throws. It just seems that it’s probably not worth having the rule if the application of it is so random. 

Next up Okayama at home. Will be kind of interesting to see who starts. But I think I can probably predict who it will be. We have the opportunity to win a historic third game in a row. It’s the stuff of our wildest dreams! Even if the inevitable happens and we follow up a nice result with a turd of a performance, at least we’ll still be able to enjoy the fact that Kobe are arse and we actually managed to not throw away what should have been an easy win. Bravo!

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO 
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (Yellow card 52') 
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 90+3')  
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (on for YAMAHARA 82')  
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for DERIK LACERDA 82')  
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto  (on for OZEKI 59')  
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for YAMAICHI 59')
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for MARCINHO 87')  
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC (on for PEDRO ROMANO 67')
FW 34. OSA Ryuki 


Man of the match
There’s one person who I always want to give this to every time he plays, but in the interest of not appearing ridiculously biased and instead just a little biased, I’m going to give it jointly to…

KAWAHARA SO and YAMAICHI SHUTO - well played to both of them and they should have given Hasebe some selection headaches if he is picking on form rather than reputation.

Goals

MARCINHO (Frontale) 61' 1-0
ITO (Frontale) 71' 2-0
OSAKO (Vissel) 73' 2-1
 

Highlights

Vs Nagoya Grampus (home) 11/10/26 J League match 9

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 2 Nagoya Grampus 

Fucking hell this was bad. After a couple of wins in the cups against lower league opposition we were back on league duty and absolutely shit the bed. This game was so bad that it has convinced me that this blog needs a new post tag. So with that in mind, along with the ‘atrocious ref’ tag that I’d forgotten about but which is very much being used for this game, I’ve now made an ‘atrocious performance’ tag that will also be used today. I did my best to obliterate any memories I had of this match in the pub after the game but unfortunately some still remain. But any discomfort I felt this morning was much more to do with a hangover from a truly shit football game, rather than from the beer. On a normal week, an awful game on a Sunday afternoon wouldn’t be as bad as an awful game on Saturday or even Friday night as there wouldn’t be as much remaining weekend for it to ruin. Sadly though, today is a public holiday, so instead of getting back to work, I instead had a day when all I could do was stew in the misery induced by such an awful match. Two terrible teams, one awful referee. If there was any justice this game would have finished 0-0 as neither team’s play in any way justified the scoring of a goal. I think I often say this, but a result where both teams lost would have been fairest. Instead, Nagoya walked away with a win, and I walked out of the stadium as soon as the final whistle was blown. After a few weeks of not being able to go to a match I was actually looking forward to this. But fuck me, it was horrendous. Praise the lord I have some reasons to look forward to Cerezo away next weekend. Please don’t for a moment think that any of those reasons have anything to do with football.

I have no real desire to dissect this match. I think the only things I need to say about our performance are that we never really looked like we would be able to score, (the goal we did get was extremely scrappy and basically a tap in. Anything other than a tap in to an empty net would have been way beyond our abilities), and when it came to defending it looked like we had decided we’d leave a one meter exclusion zone around any opposition players for fear or contracting some kind of airborne disease. I would mention marking for the first goal we conceded, but their players were all in so much space that I don’t think you can really call it marking. One nil down in the second minute. The fact that we were able to equalise so quickly might have given some hope that this was going to be an exciting match, but let’s be honest, the majority of the game was utterly dull. We had two shots on target. One was the goal and the other was presumably the only other chance in the game where it looked even slightly likely that we might score when Osa tried a nice chip late on in the game. That was it. The rest of the match didn’t see us shoot anywhere even slightly near on target. And we endlessly gave the ball away. Basically we were shit. Utter shit. Two fairly significant things happened, neither of which were shown clearly on DAZN. One of them I’ll go onto later in the ref section, but the other was where Wakizaka and Miura squared up to each other. Always a good sign when your own players are shoving and shouting at each other. Miura had failed to return the ball to Wakizaka in the previous passage of play and then went on to lose it, so presumably this is what it was about, but it was all pretty pathetic. My guess to what was said was that Wakizaka said to Miura something like ‘that was shit’ and Miura presumably said back something like ‘have a look at your own performance in this game?’ I wouldn’t have minded seeing both of them taken off at half time and replaced with players who weren’t trying to fight each other whilst ignoring their own shortcomings and didn’t have a teammate who they didn’t want to pass to on the pitch. Nothing else happened. We were cack. Ozeki came on and almost immediately let the ball pass right through him for their second gaol. But I’m not going to blame a sub for us playing so poorly. This match has left us in our usual eighth position in the league and on this showing, that is a massive plus, as I don’t think I’ve seen us play so badly for a long time.

There’s not much to say about Nagoya. They weren’t any good either. However, considering how bad we were I think a team of toddlers would have been able to take the three points. When it comes to the ref though, there’s a lot to say. I’ve long been sick of Sutani and his absolutely lowest ever level of ability when it comes to refereeing. In the game against Hiroshima he absolutely gave them all the decisions and I was questioning his appointment for the game as once again we got a (kind of) local ref for a game at the Pee Swing who seemed to hate us. However after this match it’s clear that I owe Sutani an apology. I should never have questioned his impartiality. The reason for him being terrible in the games we have with him is just that he is absolutely dog shit bad at his job. To make a comparison which will only make sense for me probably, there is a craft beer brewery from his home prefecture of Shimane called Iwami. Iwami are famous for creating their Iwami method of making beer which involves putting it in a fridge in a plastic bag for part of the brewing process, allowing people who don’t have the usual brewing equipment to make beer. The usual unfortunate outcome of the Iwami method though is that the beer is infected and more often than not undrinkable. Sutani is to refereeing what Iwami is to brewing. There’s a definite feeling that they are doing something wrong, the result is wildly variable and usually awful but occasionally something turns out partially acceptable, but it’s absolutely more by chance than by any kind of skill or judgement. The second missed incident on DAZN was a very significant one. On the 85th minute the ball CLEARLY hit the arm of a Nagoya defender. Everyone in the stadium saw it apart from one guy. Mikuriya on VAR presumably only had the DAZN feed because he didn’t notice it either. But it was absolutely clear cut robbery against us. We didn’t deserve to get anything from the match but this was a disgraceful decision, the ball hitting an outstretched arm in the box. In the first half when Marcinho was running to try to keep up with a lofted long ball, the ball hit him on his arm which was behind him as he sprinted. Sutani correctly gave a free kick. But when the same thing happened in the box right in front of him and he’s looking right at it, he doesn’t see it. An absolute simpleton of the highest order. Sutani and Mikuriya as the two main officials. Jeez, that is a terrible combination. But it wasn’t just this lack of a decision. It was the complete random factor of everything he did. Nagai’s horrendous foul on Pedro Romano on 11 minutes was only a yellow apparently even though there was a raised boot and no attempt to play the ball. Towards the end of the first half, a Nagoya player goes straight through Derik to get the ball. Free kick. A minute or so later Yamahara plays the ball and slides into a Nagoya player who is also challenging for it and immediately gets a yellow. Absolutely mind boggling inconsistency. Add to this the fact that the prick was constantly getting in the way of everything happening on the pitch. Maybe his eyesight is so bad that he has to get close to the qction or something. And his interesting interpretation of playing the advantage. Get fouled near your own box but the ball makes its way to another defender, definitely play the advantage even though you’re not actually attacking and are nowhere near even leaving your own half and are under pressure from the opposition so would clearly prefer a free kick. If a foul is committed as a player races across the half way line with hardly any defence ahead of him, bring it back for the free kick. Fucking hell he is an awful ref. So awful that he clearly stands out in a league where pretty much none of the refs seem to know what they’re doing. Even in a massive pile of turds, sometimes there is a turd that is stinkier than the rest. Bravo Sutani!

Maybe I’m crazy and none of these things happened. I didn’t see any mention of either the absolute nailed on penalty denial or the fisticuffs in any of the player or manager comments. I guess you wouldn’t expect that though, would you? At least there did seem to be an acknowledgment that we’d been absolutely cack though, which I guess is something. Whether this will cause anything to change, who knows. Today it was announced that Taniguchi has an injury so that’s another player unavailable. To be honest though, he hasn’t had a great season so far so maybe it’s not such a loss. But jeez we’re awful. It never really looks like we’ll score. it always looks like we’ll concede. It never looks like anything will change tactically. Every not awful result erases any hopes of us trying something different. To be fair, right now I’d settle for the same tactics and the change being that we just don’t play so fucking awfully. Players fighting amongst themselves is an interesting new wrinkle to the whole thing though. Don’t say they never try anything new. Hopefully there were some harsh words spoken after the game as something needs shaking up. If we’d got that penalty and scored it a lot of people would be happy about us coming back for behind and securing a wonderful draw against a team who had secured six points and scored seven goals in their previous eight games and had lost four in a row in the league. That would have made people happy! Maybe these people are better than I am, but I would have considered a late equaliser and one point a massive disappointment and a massive underachievement. Goddam this was awful. Next up Jubilo away on Wednesday in the Levain Cup and then Cerezo away on the league on Saturday.  

 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon (Yellow card 40') 
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO 
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi (on for YAMAHARA 64')  
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for YAMAMOTO 72')  
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for DERIK LACERDA 64')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto 
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 72')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for WAKIZAKA 83')

Man of the match

 

There is only one man who this could go to and that man is…

FILIP UREMOVIC - absolutely in the right place at the right time to intercept Wakizaka and Miura as they shouted at each other. We can perhaps be grateful that Sutani didn’t think him getting between the two of them was a reason to send him off. Although it probably was another thing in the match that he didn’t notice happening. 

Goals

FUJII (Nagoya) 2' 0-1
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 4' 1-1
YAMAGISHI (Nagoya) 73' 1-2

 

Highlights

 

Vs Kashima Antlers (home) 19/9/26 J League match 8

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 3 Ashima Kantlers

Damn I hate Kashima. I won’t say that my Silver Week is ruined, but this definitely felt more like a loss, even though some people might have been elated by the late equaliser. Of course after they lost three league games in a row, it always looked like playing us was the perfect opportunity for Kashima to bounce back. So I suppose we can be happy that we at least ruined that for them. But goddam it, they are shit. And goddam it, they seem to keep getting away with being shit. With over a week off, (and quite a bit longer than that if you only consider league games), I’ve got the perfect opportunity to spend a long time writing a carefully crafted blog post. At the same time, I want to forget this match as quickly as possible so you’ll have to make do with the usual thrown together crap, which this time will be chock full of moaning about scummy Kashima and the useless referee and will only briefly talk about us.

Us - 

We threw away a lead again. I guess it goes without saying really as it seems like it’s something that we do so often that you might imagine it’s a contractual obligation. When the chairman was shopping around the club’s soul, he really should have held out for better terms. I was astonished to see that Yamamoto was the Man of the Match on Flashscore. Perhaps it was recency bias, but I thought he’d had a bit of a dodgy game, misplacing pass after pass, until he put in the admittedly great cross for our 90+7 minute goal. (Amusingly the match stats make him our best passer, so there is a high likeliness that I am talking out of my backside here. But Yamamoto did make one particular poor attempt at scoring which like the Mochiyama swing and a miss is lingering in my memory…). At the back, Miura, perhaps because he knew Sasaki was on the right so was less likely to take his spot, put in a classically shit Miura performance, going missing for most of Kashima’s good chances. The fact is though, that we totally dominated this game and should have won easily. I could probably list all the easy chances we missed, (sometimes actually missing the ball completely), but as that would require me watching the game back again, I won’t do it. If you score three times in a match and don’t win, it’s a bit of a problem. But then if you look at the bench it becomes clear that we’re just about hanging in there when it comes to putting together match day squads. Maybe we thought it would be useful to have two centre backs on the bench in case we decided to go to a back six at some stage of the match. Just the one striker because… we don’t have anyone else. And we didn’t even use all of our subs. And three out of four of them were made with less than ten minutes of the game left. (As an aside, Derik looked a lot fitter and lasted 84 minutes. Probably could have been changed a bit earlier though as he looked cooked midway through the second half). How can we have so few options so early in the season? So, considering all of this, I probably should be happy with the result. But I’m not, as it pissed me off something rotten. Talking of rottenness, let’s move on to the opposition and the ref.

Them and the ref - 

It’s not my usual way to lump these two together but on this occasion I think it makes perfect sense as they seemed to be working in tandem, in perfect harmony. If the ref Nakamura wasn’t wearing his YUMA shirt under his ref’s shirt he definitely had put it out ready for hm to sign after the game. His affection for Kashima’s be-nappied whinger in chief was clear from the start of the game and he even went as far as to display this affection publicly when he gave him a little bit of a massage after Suzuki had filled his diaper and was having a little cry on the floor after an assault on Brodersen didn’t get what he thought was in order, the dissolution of Kawasaki Frontale and Kawasaki city as a whole. Everyone knows Suzuki is a moaner, a fouler, a cheat and a diver, which makes it all the more surprising that refs are happy with letting him do what he wants, including screaming in the officials’ faces. I’m not sure if Suzuki’s bright pink hue was a result of him spending too long on the sun bed or whether he’s just become a full on gammon now. He certainly likes to whinge like a gammon. There is no doubt in my mind that Suzuki did enough to get at least a couple of yellow cards but, surprise surprise, he didn’t get booked at all. And instead was basically given free rein to go around kicking people all over the pitch. It was on one of these ridiculous occasions, where a clear piece of Suzuki fouling didn’t get even half the punishment that it deserved, that Oniki lost his rag and got booked. There must be something in the water in Kashima as they all seem so aggro. Maybe there’s a meth lab at the reservoir that supplies the drinking water for the area where the players and staff live. (Yes, I’ve just googled chemicals that make people angry). Although I guess they probably don’t live in Kashima, right? Why would you if you had any kind of other option? At the end of the match when Ito got booked, (for what, who knows. Perhaps being a Frontale player?), some bearded twat on the Kashima bench seemed to be attempting to start a fight. Obviously no point in punishing him though, right? Because he’s one of the guys in red. The only meaningful yellow he gave one of their team was for Kunto Misao. And let’s be honest, he should, (and normally does), get an automatic red just for being his usual dickhead self. None of the other horrendous fouls they committed was deemed worthy of a card. But at the same time Nakamura was flinging them around to our players for anything. I didn’t make that many notes during the game but looking back at them the descriptor ‘atrocious’ is used for the ref on multiple occasions. So let’s just say it one more time here. NAKAMURA IS ATROCIOUS. The yellow card for Derik was a joke and the free kick the twat gave Kashima lead directly to their first gaol. Nakamura, do one.

The Kashima twattery was not just confined to the team and the staff though. As you’d expect, their fans are also idiots. Before the match the mere mention of ‘Kawasaki Frontale supporters’ was enough to send them into a chorus of boos. Much like the apparently ‘great’ fans of Urawa, they love a boo. I think it might say something about how they’re feeling at the moment. Triggered by a mention of the opposition? Feeling maybe a bit insecure? Three losses in a row and then a draw against a team whose results are basically randomly assigned from week to week? They are right to feel worried. Their team is awful and hopefully their bad run of results will continue for the rest of the year. Actually the rest of the century. They’ve been getting away with being shit and still somehow winning for too long. I think we’d all enjoy seeing some chickens coming home to roost. To everyone involved in the club from the first team through the reserves and youth set up, to the staff, board and right up to the supporters, fuck off the lot of you. 


Hmmm. A draw. The late equaliser was fun at the time, but sitting in the pub made me pretty miserable as once again we’d messed up. We had so many chances to win the game. And we had plenty of chances to stop them scoring. Certainly we weren’t helped by the ref, but ultimately we shit the bed again. After the final whistle as the Kashima players got a bit of a booing from their fans (of course they did. Kashima fans probably boo their children’s first steps), for some reason our fans kept singing. They were still singing as I left the stadium after the players had come to the supporters section and done their little bow. Whilst I don’t think we should be booing our team, being so delighted by a late equaliser in a game we should have clearly won does make us look a bit simple. You could say we appreciate the effort the players put in. But such a joyous response at the end of the game feels a bit like being delighted you shat all over the toilet floor. Some feeling like, ok, you didn’t do it in the actual toilet, but at least you managed to not soil yourself in the living room. When the only satisfaction you can draw from a result is the slight pleasure of knowing that the opposition fans are disappointed, there’s probably not that much to celebrate in reality. But I suppose it could have been worse. Next up, Kumamoto away in the Levain Cup on the 29th. This will be the first game I miss this season. To be honest, maybe the break might be good for me. I don’t think we’re shit, but I am getting a bit fed up with our relentless pursuit of randomness and inconsistency.

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO (Yellow card 90+1') 
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki (Yellow card 37') 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 90+8') 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 43') 

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for TACHIBANADA 86')  
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke (on for DERIK LACERDA 84')
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto 
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
FW 34. OSA Ryuki (on for MARCINHO 67')
FW 41. IENAGA Akihiro (on for ITO 86')

Man of the match

 

It’s a bit weird, considering the result, but I’m actually going to give this out today. One player did a great job after a few dodgy performances earlier in the season, and the other really got involved. So I’m giving it to…

SASAKI Asahi & ITO Tatsuya - The former kept Yuma Suzuki quiet (well, in footballing terms, of course he didn’t shut up moaning for the whole game), and the latter scored a lovely goal, gave 100% effort and was involved in most of the good things we did. Also, if Ito's mystery yellow card was for winding up the Kashima bench, extra kudos to him!

Goals

LEO CEARA (Kashima) 44' 0-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 45+4' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 54' 2-1
LEO CEARA (Kashima) 67' 2-2
MATSUMURA (Kashima) 83' 2-3
PEDRO ROMANO (Frontale) 90+7' 3-3

 

Highlights

  
 

Vs Shimizu S Pulse (kind of home) 6/9/26 J League match 6

 

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Shimizu S Pulse

This game saw us back at the (mostly) cursed (for us) National Stadium. It’s never a particularly fun experience to watch Frontale there, particularly from behind the goal, about 3km from the pitch.  Add to this our results there in league games and you have a perfect misery cocktail. But somehow on this occasion we managed to actually get the job done. Although let’s be honest, there were numerous times in the match and plenty of occasions where it looked like we were going to mess it up again, exactly like we tend to do most weeks this season. There is really something a bit shitty about having games at the National Stadium. And it’s not just for the reasons I mentioned above. Unlike with clubs like Kashima, the majority of whose fans almost certainly live closer to the National Stadium than they do to Kashima, it seems a bit stupid for clubs to make the fans who go to their home games basically do an away trip. Admittedly, it’s closer to where I live than Todoroki is, (before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, Todoroki is the nearest home stadium to where I live so I do support my local team), but I still can’t really get on board with the whole “exciting experience” thing that it seems to be sold as. But all of this is basically a preamble to me saying that I understand that National Stadium games are probably a prerequisite for us at the moment. With the redevelopment of Todoroki happening next season we need somewhere to play, and I believe that using the stadium a few times is part of us showing good will and therefore being able to use it when we can’t use Todoroki. Perhaps people looking at the attendance for this match will think it was a disaster as we only got a bit over 37000 in. I should say though that the weather was horrible, and I presume that this knocked out a significant number of the free ticket crowd whose presence usually pads out the Kokuristu attendance figures. Anyway, last time we played a league game here we got absolutely hammered by YFM. Thankfully we managed to avoid a similar fate on this occasion and blimey, we actually won at the Kokuritsu in J1! As I don’t really know what to say about this match, I won’t use the semi-regular headings and will just lump everything together in a stream of consciousness splurge, perfect to make it as unreadable as possible, right?

Hasebe rotated for this match! I don’t know why he did this. And I don’t know why he changed the defence and strikers so much but left the midfield entirely intact. Of course, up front we don’t really have many options as I mentioned in the last post. On this occasion we went with Mochiyama which I think makes sense as Derik seems to get knackered quite quickly after he enters the pitch, so it probably makes more sense to use him as a sub rather than as a starter. Honma has been knocking in goals for fun for his university team, but unfortunately for us, this means he has been unavailable for us. Hopefully he’ll be able to provide us with another option soon. But you can’t really argue with Mochiyama starting, particularly as he scored after 23 seconds. It was a lovely goal and for the majority of the game it looked like it might be our only successful attack. I was a bit surprised when Hasebe took him off at half time, but I suppose when you’ve only got two (semi) fit strikers it might make sense to not overstretch either of them. At the back he went with a centre back pairing of Maruyama and Uremovic, which was a bit of a surprise. I think they did pretty well though. Well, apart from the one occasion where they both went for the same header and took each other out. I’ve never noticed Uremovic doing this before and maybe it was a tactic for this match, but I quite liked the fact that for every Shimizu long goal kick he would come charging out of defence towards the ball and more often than not bonk it forward with a high speed header. Konno more than justified his spot on the right I think. He was fouled for the red card, and also for the other red card that probably should have been given. (More on that later). He also got changed at half time but I wonder if it was more to do with the fact that he’d been absolutely smashed to pieces by Shimizu clogging. So that’s the non-regular-§starter business, I guess. So on to our play… I dunno, the same as usual really. Lots of possession, not many actual attacks, or at least attacks that were in any way likely to lead to an actual goal. But it did feel like we were very much on top… and would probably throw away another lead and regret not scoring more.

And we did. At least the first part. And at least for a while. You can’t argue with the penalty. And shockingly, I don’t think I even did argue about the penalty in the stadium, and I make it a matter of principle to argue with pretty much every decision these awful referees give. It was a shame as, you know, it would be nice to get a clean sheet sooner or later, right? We can only dream. Aside from the penalty, we dealt pretty well with everything Shimizu threw at us. Brodersen made some good saves. We hit the post, again. Before we managed to take the lead for the second time there was a really worrying panic that looked to be spreading through the team. You could see a lot of people getting frustrated and moaning at each other. Clearly and understandably confidence amongst the players is around the same level as it is amongst the fans. (I’m presuming everyone feels the same way as I do, which is a massive reach given how happy clappy a lot of our fans are, but definitely some people seem to feel the same way as I do). But thankfully, in spite of the efforts of the referee, we managed to score a second and then miraculously a third, making it a somewhat comfortable win in the end. We shouldn’t forget though that we played for about an hour against 10 men and even then managed to concede before we could extend our lead. One final point in this section before I go on to absolutely bitch about another predictably atrocious referee. Our second goal was absolutely amazing and everyone should watch a replay of it as it had everything. I could try to explain it but I think it’s just easier to watch the replay, but make sure you see the bit where Uremovic gets kicked in the face by a tumbling Shimizu player, fallsl to the floor clutching his face and as he does, kicks the ball (intentionally or not, who knows…) perfectly to Derik. It’s been referred to online as an ‘Ita ita through pass’ which I think is just perfect. Shimizu complained about the goal. I’ve got no idea what they were complaining about as it was clearly not offside. But even so we had a lengthy VAR delay, and then the goal was given. Then back for some more VAR to check for a possible red card. For whom, well it seems that no-one knew. And even the commentary when I watched it back didn’t know either. The kick in the face? The annoyed reaction from someone who got kicked in the face? Brodersen appearing and absolutely losing his shit? All in all, completely confusing and a perfect encapsulation of a useless officiating performance. 

Ah Jumpei Iida. As I never tire of shouting from the stands when he’s in charge of one of our games ‘FUCK OFF JUMPEI!”.  I wasn’t sure whether I should be pleased to see him in charge as at least we could be sure that we’d be having a J League refereeing performance, instead of the random factor of a guest ref that we had for our previous two league games. And thankfully it wasn’t the awful Sutani or Mikuriya (I could name plenty more, but those two are in my recent memory). But don’t get excited it was the eternally hopeless Jumpei whose position as one of the more senior refs in the league can only be related to his age, and absolutely not to his abilities. I think part of the reason this season is so wild for us is that you never know what kind of ref you’re going to get from week to week. Well apart from it being a crap one. You just can’t be sure about the way in which they will be crap. But one things for sure, with Jumpei you always know you’re going to get all round incompetence. And we got it in spades. Add to this a guy on VAR who we’ve never had for a match, (so clearly a less ‘experienced’ ref), and you know you’re in for a shocker. I reckon Shimizu could have had three players sent off, so I suppose we should be grateful that they got at least one of the red cards. The first challenge on Konno that only warranted a yellow according to Iida looked bad to me. The red card was so blatant so it was a surprise that we needed a VAR review. But it seemed to be that VAR in this match was used like a new toy or a paid service that they were determined to make sure they got their money’s worth to cover the monthly subscription. One time I was very happy we had VAR, (and that’s something I VERY rarely say), was when Iida gave a horrendously clear and obvious corner / goal kick decision the wrong way, much to the disbelief of the players and the crowd. He was overruled by VAR, and fair to him put his hands up to apologise, but then that appeared to send him spiraling, giving each subsequent decision to make up for the previous one. “Oh, I made a stupid mistake here, I’ll even things up with this one. Oh that was a bit stupid, I’ll even things up with the next one…” etc. The first half ended with another insane decision when Ryo Germaine, Frontale tormenter when he was at Iwata, went down, apparently being taken out by a sniper in the third tier and ever un reliable Iida gave a free kick against Maruyama. Seriously, there were so many bad decisions in this game that I think people close to Iida might be considering staging an intervention. “Put down the whistle and slowly step away from it. It’s ok, you’re safe here. Don’t worry about that last clearly incorrect decision you made. No one’s going to shout “FUCK OFF JUMPEI!” at you. Well apart from Neil maybe, but he’s clearly an idiot”. In the second half he wasn’t bothered about a clear backpass, waving it away. But he was bothered about booking Marcinho either for a dive in the box, which he immediately got up after so clearly wasn’t claiming anything, (I believe the commentator said it couldn’t be simulation if there is any contact, but maybe I misunderstood  him or misunderstand the rule) or for a fair tackle immediately afterwards. He also gave a nonsense free kick against Derik who took the ball cleanly and clearly later on. I’m sure it’s not intentional, but plenty of J League refs do seem to give more decisions against foreign players. Is it just me who thinks this? Anyway, all of this is to say that Iida was hopeless in the way that Iida is always hopeless. I was delighted to get some back up for once from other people in the crowd who also were pretty disgusted by both his announcement before the game and his general uselessness. 

I’ve realised I’ve got to the end here and haven’t even mentioned Shimizu really. It was always going to be tough for them after going down to ten. They brought a decent amount of fans on a horrible rainy day to a not very good stadium for football. Regular readers will know that I don’t have anything against Shimizu really, so I have no interest in saying nasty things about them. So this paragraph is kind of pointless.

Next up Mito away next weekend. No midweek game makes it a bit confusing why Hasebe rotated so much, but given that we won, I don’t think anyone can say it was a mistake. After that we’ve got Kashima at home the following weekend. So an Ibaraki double header, one home and one away, and thankfully the Kashima game is at home. I’m not going to Kashima away this year because I’ve decided to stop doing things that are basically masochism. If you offered me three points from these next two games I’d bite your hand off for a loss at Mito and a win at home against Kashima, but I guess things don’t really work out that the way they would if there was any kind of justice in the world. As evidenced by us losing to scummy Machida. Although I suppose if you look at the form table for the last two games, Mito is by far the tougher game. 😉 Fingers crossed for six points, but I’d definitely take none and then three!

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya 
FW 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for SASAKI 82')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for TACHIBANADA 73')
MF 19. KAWAHARA So 
MF 23. MARCINHO (Yellow card 72') (on for KONNO 46')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for ITO 90+3')
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (on for MOCHIYAMA 46')

Man of the match

Not sure who to give this to. Konno did well in the first half but got taken off. Plenty of people were alright, but I’m not the kind of person who wants to give this out to the least bad player. If no-one stands out as better than the rest, no-one feels fairer. But we did win, and one player played an important part in making this happen, so I’ll give it to…

MARCINHO - only played a half, but got more goals than anyone else in the stadium and if you don’t put even the simple chances in, you don’t win games. As we are well aware of this season. Also I like his Val La dance.

Goals

MOCHIYAMA (Frontale) 1' 1-0
OH (Shimizu) 68' PEN 1-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 77' 2-1
MARCINHO (Frontale) 90' 3-1

 

Highlights

 

Vs JEF United (home) 29/8/26 J League match 4

 

Kawasaki Frontale 4 - 2 JEF United

Still undefeated! And by god we’ve only gone and won a match! This was a fun game to watch. Well the first half was anyway. The second was a bit of a snooze fest. It’s great to finally get a win and hopefully this will give everyone a bit more confidence. We’ve got another game fast approaching so I’ll keep this relatively brief.

It’s interesting to see that once again we have Yahiro Hasebe in charge of the team. Much like when Hasebe joined, in this match we seemed to be playing with the goal of scoring as many as possible and not worrying too much about conceding as long as we kept scoring. Of course this all changed in the second half but I guess that was to be expected. The early injury to Romanic was a bit of a weird one. I didn’t know what had happened at the time and checking the coverage hasn’t helped me get any closer to knowing. Also there doesn’t seem to have been anything mentioned in any post match comments. But then again, I haven’t read everything. So on came Derik. I wondered if I had ruined his Frontale career before it had started by buying his towel on Wednesday. I can’t really explain why I chose him, I do these kind of things on vibes mainly. On Wednesday he assisted, (admittedly after missing a sitter), and when he was called on unexpectedly early, I wondered if he’d be able to do the business again, this time in a league game. One goal and two assists suggests that he can. He did have to be subbed later on which suggests that maybe he’s not completely up to speed yet. But he did a good job so well done to him. Sasaki had a bit of a mare, particularly with their first goal. He’s maybe not totally fit either but you can’t really use that to explain the first goal which was just totally unbelievable for such a usually reliable player. It was interesting to see Hasebe switch Yamahara and Sasaki around after their second goal. I thought it worked pretty well. After the switch Yamahara looked like he’d just removed a pair of really tight shoes that he’d been wearing since his transfer. Absolute relief and a new found freedom! Hasebe said that both of them can play on either side, but I wonder if we might see Yamahara spending more time on the left in the future. After all, that is where he’s played for most of his career. That does cause a problem as we have Miura in that spot. But then again when Miura came on in this game he was played on the left wing, which might work I guess, particularly as Miyagi is injured for six months (I think it was six months…). Some things for Hasebe to think about, I guess.

I don’t have much to say about JEF. They brought lots of fans so credit to them for that. Erison was back at Todoroki and surprisingly didn’t score. Normally ex-players always seem to do that. (Issaka Zain last time, I think. He wasn’t in the matchday squad this time round). I hope they can sort themselves out a bit as I’d like to see them survive. The fact that we scored four times against them suggests that they have quite a bit to fix at the moment. The ref was from Germany and I don’t have much to say about him either. I was pleased he dished out a yellow card for a dive though. Definitely would like to see more J League refs do that. Maybe they aren’t aware of the law. So this seems to be a blog post very low on whinges. Which really makes a change.

So we won! But let’s not get carried away. Three of our four games have been against teams who have looked like they might be relegation contenders. And we’ve only managed to beat one of them. I wonder if the reason we’ve drawn so many games is because we were denied the… thrill… of draws in the half season so wanted to get that feeling back again. I definitely prefer winning though. Whether that will continue on Wednesday is another matter. I feel like we definitely owe Machida a beating. But to be honest this feeling is based mainly on the fact that I really don’t like them. It will be interesting to see if the Machida wannabe bad boy fans will be allowed to attend on a school night. Also I wonder if those shirtless medieval style centre circle flag wavers will be there. The whole Machida away experience has been quite weird in recent years. I suspect the crowd will be quite small which will be a very welcome thing as it might make the shuttle bus situation better. I don’t particularly want to be stuck up the mini mountain till midnight, waiting for all the people who’ve paid money to jump queue for the shuttle bus. Fingers crossed we’ll have something to enjoy and celebrate whilst we wait. 

 

Team 

GK 49. Svend BRODERSEN
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO
DF 3. TANIGUCHI Hiroto
DF 5. SASAKI Asahi
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
MF 6. YAMAMOTO Yuki
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (Yellow card 13') 
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC

Subs

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 13. MIURA Sota (on for MARCINHO 57')
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto (on for ITO 59')
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 19. KAWAHARA So (on for YAMAHARA 83')
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi (on for PEDRO ROMANO 83')
FW 36. HONMA Rin (Yellow card 87')  (on for DERIK LACERDA 57')
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (on for ROMANIC 6')

Man of the match

I don’t particularly like to go with the same person as they do in the stadium but on this occasion I also think it has to go to…



DERIK LACERDA - One goal and two assists. Nothing else to say really.

Goals

DERIK LACERDA (Frontale) 10' 1-0
TANAKA (JEF) 26' 1-1
ITO (Frontale) 37' 2-1
TANAKA (JEF) 38' 2-2
MARCINHO (Frontale) 42' 3-2
WAKIZAKA (Frontale) 45+3' 4-2

 

Highlights

 

Vs Tochigi SC (home) 26/8/26 Emperor's Cup second round

Kawasaki Frontale 3 - 1 Tochigi SC

I always enjoy the Emperor’s Cup games. Well, maybe that’s not the case during or after some past games. So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I always enjoy anticipating Emperor’s Cup games. There’s always a little bit of excitement about who will be in the team. It’s a chance to see some new faces. I say a chance because quite often we’ve gone with only a few changes and the whole process has been quite dull. I guess going into these games a manager has two choices. You can play the normal players and sometimes lose in humiliation, or rotate the line up and sometimes lose in slightly less humiliation. I’m glad on this occasion we went for the latter and even managed to avoid the losing part. Given that we’ve drawn every game in the league so far, there’s a definite feeling that we adjust to the level of whoever we’re playing. For a while it looked like that might happen again. Well maybe that was the optimistic way of looking at it when we went behind to a J3 team. To be honest though we dealt with this match fairly comfortably on the whole. But don’t forget, we usually win our first match against J3 or University team in this completion and then go out in the next round to a J2 team. This year we’ll be playing Tegevajaro Miyazaki in the third round. Apparently it’s away. I quite want o go, but recognise that this is a kind of stupid idea. We’ll see…

Fair play to Tochigi SC for bringing a decent amount of fans. Kyoto Sanga didn’t bring that many more. And good on them for taking the lead. You can probably guess who I’ll blame for the goal, but before it got to the stage where Yamaguchi started his dive after the ball had already entered the net, we had had a series or increasingly ridiculously unlucky ricochets as we struggled to clear the ball. It was a nice finish from Tochigi’s Otabor though, a player who I saw play for Grulla Morioka plenty of times. One other bit of Yamaguchi bashing I need to include was the absolutely insane time wasting he did when he dithered over a goal kick which got turned into a corner by the ref. It was clearly going to happen if he didn’t get a move on so quite why he decided to delay further even as the ref clearly counted and I shouted to him to hurry up, I don’t know. This cock up meant that Kan who was waiting to come on for his debut didn’t actually manage to touch the ball as the substitution was delayed as we had a corner to defend. 

Maruyama was back in the team but only lasted till half time. I don’t know if this was tactical or due to an injury. Uremovic started and grew into the game I thought. Maybe his Frontale future is looking a bit brighter. Yamaichi came on for his debut late in the game which was nice. He missed most of last season due to ‘illness’. Was never really sure what that was. Nagane played right back and looked pretty good as we might expect after his involvement last year. Mochiyama played the Wakizaka role and did a decent job. Would have liked him to play a bit further forward alongside Derik, who was another debutant, but we got some player rotation so we probably can’t moan about the completely unsurprising tactical inflexibility. Derik had a good game I thought. He likes to put himself about a bit. His first real involvement was a bit of a shocker of a miss, but he improved and assisted for one of the goals and was a general nuisance. It was nice to see Konno score as he’d had a bit of a quiet first half, the ball just never seeming to go anywhere near him for some reason. Ozeki got two goals which is great and did some good stuff, but also made a few cock ups, one of which lead to their goal, and seemed to want to over complicate things sometimes. Hopefully he’ll focus more on the good stuff he did and start making a real challenge for a starting spot. I realise I’ve mentioned a lot of players here but for the first time this year there was someone who actually deserved the man of the match award so check that out below. It might be surprising. 

What else is there to say? An unknown ref who didn’t seem to make any horrendous errors, but obviously booked the big Brazilian as always tends to happen. No VAR, an absolute delight! I suppose I need to mention the usual weird Emperor’s Cup pre-game music. I think this year they might have asked AI to make them some music with the prompt of there being lyrics about being ‘Ready!’ and telling us to ‘Go!’ They cycled through a few genres but the same limited lyrical theme kept coming up. Quite weird, quite amusing and definitely more interesting than the usual never ending funky rock loop they have gone for in the past. One final highlight, the local school brass band and cheer group at half time were great. As they were last time. I dunno why I like it so much but I think it’s always fun to see people dancing whilst playing brass and wind instruments. 

So, next up JEF at home on Saturday. Whether we can take anything from this match into that one, I don’t know. Whether anyone who came into the team for this game will feature in that one, I don’t know. I doubt it, but who knows? I’m pleased that Hasebe did the right thing as far as I’m concerned when it came to the players he picked for this match, so hopefully he’ll continue to do that going forward. We’ll see. After that, it’s a quick turn around before Machida away on Wednesday. I really hate Machida. Presumably they’ll beat us, but of course I hope they don’t. 

Team 

GK 1. YAMAGUCHI Louis
DF 2. MATSUNAGANE Yuto
DF 28. MARUYAMA Yuichi
DF 22. Filip UREMOVIC
DF 13. MIURA Sota
MF 19. KAWAHARA So
MF 16. OZEKI Yuto
MF 18. KONNO Kazuya
MF 20. MOCHIYAMA Kyosuke
MF 23. MARCINHO
FW 97. DERIK LACERDA (Yellow card 16')

Subs

GK 21. HAYASAKA Yuki
DF 4. PEDRO ROMANO (on for MARUYAMA 46')
MF 8. TACHIBANADA Kento
FW 9. Lazar ROMANIC (on for DERIK LACERDA 59')
MF 14. WAKIZAKA Yasuto 
MF 17. ITO Tatsuya (on for MARCINHO 69')
MF 25. YAMAICHI Shuto (on for MOCHIYAMA 69')
DF 29. YAMAHARA Reon
DF 31. KAN Noriharu (on for KONNO 90+3')



Man of the match

The first time this season I’ve felt even slightly inclined to give this and I never would have expected I’d be giving it to…

MARCINHO - recently has seemed to have increasingly less ‘final product’ but in this match he did the usual running fast thing but actually managed some decent passes on top of it. Hopefully this is him getting back into his best form!

 

Goals

OTABOR (Tochigi) 29' 0-1
OZEKI (Frontale) 45' 1-1
KONNO (Frontale) 50' 2-1
OZEKI (Frontale) 56' 3-1

Highlights